Many enterprises and other entities provide data storage capacity to users (e.g., employees or clients) and/or applications via data storage arrays connected to a network. Often, an enterprise may wish to impose limits on how much storage individual users can consume in particular directories, e.g., for storing files and data. An enterprise may also wish to impose limits on how much space an application may consume, such as by limiting the amount of space available in the application's directory.
Some conventional data storage systems accommodate these needs by employing quota trees. Quota trees are storage limits that can be applied to particular directories on a per-directory basis. For example, by imposing a quota tree on every user directory on a data storage array, the enterprise is able to limit the amount of storage each user is allowed to consume. Similarly, by imposing a quota tree on every application directory, the enterprise is able to limit how much space any given application can consume for its own use.